The question is not can animals speak but can they suffer.
Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart.
If Christianity needed an Anti-Christ they needed look no farther than Paul.
Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes ...
Is it possible for a man to move the earth? Yes; but he must first find out another earth to stand upon.
The word "independence" is united to the accessory ideas of dignity and virtue. The word "dependence" is united to the ideas of inferiority and corruption.
Without publicity no good is permanent; under the auspices of publicity no evil can continue.
The turn of a sentence has decided the fate of many a friendship and for aught that we know the fate of many a kingdom.
Those physical difficulties which you cannot account for be very slow to arraign; for he that would be wiser than Nature would be wiser than God.
The law of England has established trial by judge and jury in the conviction that it is the mode best calculated to ascertain the truth.
Pleasure is in itself a good; nay even setting aside immunity from pain the only good.
No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.
The age we live in is a busy age; in which knowledge is rapidly advancing towards perfection.
The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.
All government is a trust. Every branch of government is a trust and immemorially acknowledged to be so.
The request of industry to government is as modest as that of Diogenes to Alexander: Get out of my light.
O Logic: born gatekeeper to the Temple of Science victim of capricious destiny: doomed hitherto to be the drudge of pedants: come to the aid of thy master Legislation
The addability of the happiness of different subjects is a postulum without which all political reasonings are at a stand
I don't care whether animals are capable of thinking; all I care about is that they are capable of suffering!
It is with government as with medicine its only business is the choice of evils. Every law is an evil for every law is an infraction of liberty.
Unkind language is sure to produce the fruits of unkindness--that is suffering in the bosom of others.
There is no pestilence in a state like a zeal for religion independent of morality.
Lawyers sometimes tell the truth. They'll do anything to win a case.
As to the evil which results from censorship it is impossible to measure it because it is impossible to tell where it ends.
As to the evil which results from a censorship it is impossible to measure it for it is impossible to tell where it ends.
Right... is the child of law.
A civilized society must count animals as worthy of moral consideration and ethical treatment. The question is not Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but Can they suffer?
Among the several cloudy appellatives which have been commonly employed as cloaks for misgovernment there is none more conspicuous in this atmosphere of illusion than the word Order.
It is vain to talk of the interest of the community without understanding what is the interest of the individual
...the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.
[I]n principle and in practice in a right track and in a wrong one the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.
Secrecy being an instrument of conspiracy ought never to be the system of a regular government.
The spirit of dogmatic theology poisons anything it touches.
Happiness is a very pretty thing to feel but very dry to talk about.
Want keeps pace with dignity. Destitute of the lawful means of supporting his rank his dignity presents a motive for malversation and his power furnishes the means.
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do as well as to determine what we shall do.
Publicity is the very soul of justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion and the surest of all guards against improbity.
Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it.
The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.
Stretching his hand up to reach the stars too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.
It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.
The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.
Priestly was the first (unless it was Becarria) who taught my lips to pronounce this sacred truth--that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.
Every law is an infraction of liberty.
Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.
The power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law.
All poetry is misrepresentation.
Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters pain and pleasure.
Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove.
All punishment is mischief; all punishment in itself is evil.
Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights rhetorical nonsense"?nonsense upon stilts.
Reputation is the road to power
What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but Can they suffer?
To what shall the character of utility be ascribed if not to that which is a source of pleasure?